Posts on Just Tinkering

Personal note - mental health - update

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0100

A lot has happened the last 12 months. My dad’s health deteriorated more rapidly, my mom had some injuries which impeded on her mobility, and last January, my dad died as a result of COPD and pulmonary fibrosis.

Consistently deploying Lambda functions and layers using Terraform

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:00:00 +0100

The code that accompanies this blogpost can be found here

Deploying Lambda functions to AWS using Terraform can be quite a struggle, especially when deploying from multiple environments (which only happens in dev and test environments, am I right?).

Personal note - mental health

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Last year, one of my intentions was to write more blogs. As you might’ve seen, I didn’t manage to do so. I’ve been struggling with depression for a while, and last year I couldn’t find the energy to put much effort into writing. Some health-related ‘surprised’ in the family didn’t help with that, either.

Setting up AWS IoT Core using Terraform

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The code that accompanies this blogpost can be found here

I’ve been tinkering with AWS IoT Core this year, and wanted to put at least some of what I’ve found and done into a blog, so here it is.

Exporting an AMI to multiple formats

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a short follow-up on my previous post.

In my previous post about creating an AMI with Image Builder, I exported that AMI to a different image format (vmdk).

There’s two things I ran into with that solution:

Creating an AMI with Image Builder

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The code that accompanies this blogpost can be found here

Update 2024-12-07: In the examples I use Amazon Linux 2023, which cannot be exported to other formats. I’ve changed the code in the repository to use an Ubuntu 24.04 base image, which can be exported.

I’ve been working with AWS Image Builder a lot more over the last couple of months, while replacing a Packer setup that was run on a Windows laptop, with Image Builder.

Dedicated game server and AWS Instance Scheduler

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I’ve started playing a game (Satisfactory, for those who want to know) with my two kids. To make it easier to play together, I’ve set up a dedicated server on an EC2 instance so the game is also available when the host is not available.

Automating patching with AWS Systems Manager

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The code that accompanies this blogpost can be found here

Recently I’ve been looking into patching Windows servers that have dependencies between them, using AWS Systems Manager.

The use-case was an application that exists of web servers, middleware servers and a database server.

Lessons learned from migrating 42 servers to AWS

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year I’ve worked on a project where we had to migrate 42 servers from a data center to AWS as part of an AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) deal. There was some pressure, since the contract with the data center would end about 2 months later and the customer didn’t want to renew or extend the current contract with the data center.

AWS Community Builder

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

So, a couple of weeks ago a coworker mentioned the Community Builder program was open for sign-up again. So I gave it a try.

Today I got a message confirming I’m now officially an AWS Community Builder (Security & Identity)! :-D

How to enable and configure Security Hub for PCI DSS compliancy checks using Terraform

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How to enable and configure Security Hub for PCI DSS compliancy checks using Terraform
#

This article is also posted here

How to use Github OIDC and Terraform to assume roles in AWS using WebIdentity

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When using Github Actions to deploy infrastructure to AWS with Terraform, you can use Open ID Connect (OIDC) to grant Github access to AWS without needing to provide access keys.

As a GitHub workflow, this would be somewhat like this:

VS Code and Javascript Debugging

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been tinkering on a Discord-bot in Javascript using Node.js, together with my best friend.

For easier testing, we run the bot in Docker, so we don’t have all the dependencies littering our computers. We do want to be able to debug the bot, though, which is where I ran into an article on the internet by oneturkmen. The article has been deleted, but the GitHub-repository is (at the time of writing this article) still available here.

Personal Note

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while (again) since I posted to this blog/website. The last 8 months I’ve been at home on sick-leave because I burned out.

The road has been - and still is - long, since…

Azure Expiring Passwords of Automation Accounts

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve had an issue where the password of an automation account we use had expired.

Since we don’t want to have to change password of these kinds of accounts, we set the password policy to not expire the password.

Spectre/Meltdown Registry Keys

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Recently we had to make some fixes to registry settings because of the Spectre/Meltdown patches for Windows. By default not all registry settings would be properly set, so that patches might not be activated.

Synology Btrfs crash

Sat, 09 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of months ago. I got myself a new Synology to replace my older DS213. The choice was made for a DS716+II, which also supports Btrfs. To migrate from the DS213 to the DS716, I took out one of the mirror-drives of the DS213 and placed it in the DS716 to reformat and then gradually transfer the data to the new Syno. Once everything would be transferred, I’d put the remaining disk of the DS213 and add it to the DS716.

Converting Wordpress-blog to Markdown

Mon, 16 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I’ve switched from Wordpress to Github Pages. I’m using Jekyll with Github pages, which means I get to write my posts in Markdown. Since I didn’t want my old posts to go to waste entirely, I decided to see how I could ’extract’ the posts from the Wordpress export I had, and put them in seperate Markdown-files.

Exchange - Listing Calendar-delegates for mailboxes

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been troubleshooting an issue where meeting requests are being received by mailboxes/users that are not included in the requests. To get a list of calendar delegates for mailboxes where these are set, I found the following couple of lines quite handy:

Exchange - Listing mailboxes, mailbox-type and if the account is enabled

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working with Exchange some more, lately, where I’ve also had to generate an overview of the mailboxes, mailbox-types and if the underlying account is enabled or not. This had to be exported to a CSV-file. I came to the next lines of code for that:

Changing the network profile in Windows

Thu, 11 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes it happens that the network profile of a connection in Windows is incorrectly categorised. Sometimes such an event happens out of the blue, even. This can be fixed by changing the value of the value of the Category-key of the network profile in the registry, which can be found here:

Rooting the Desire HD

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve previously rooted my Desire HD, but reverted it back to stock a little while ago, after HTC announced they were NOT going to release an Android 4.x update for the DHD.

MacBooks, BootCamp, Windows 7 and no optical drive...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today my friend and I have been working on installing Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro. Optical drive has been replaced by an SSD drive, and while trying to install Windows, we found out it will not boot from a USB device…

Windows 7 and .NET FrameWork 1.1

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Had to test something at work today, regarding Group Policies and software installation. It failed on my Windows 7 VM. Couldn’t quite figure out why, until I found out the application needs .NET FrameWork version 1.1.

Flashing Android

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Flashed my HTC Desire HD today. Since it is/was branded I had to make a GoldCard first. After that I was able to work magic :)

I used the info on the following links, in succession:

ThunderCloud?

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been busy migrating from BPOS to Office365 last weekend. Manually. Everything went smooth, until one of the COs complained he was missing his appointments in his calendar. I made a backup of every mailbox before moving the items, of course (NOT), and he used his laptop/Outlook after I moved the items from his old mailbox to his new mailbox, so his local (offline) copy was empty as well.

Microsoft Cloudmail-server being blacklisted MY problem???

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

One of our users got a notification today after sending an email. Said a server with a certain IP-address is listen on a blacklist with Trend Micro RBL+.

So I thought to do the right thing (besides requesting to be put off the blacklist) and contact Microsoft Technical Support about it, since this has potential to affect their other customers as well.

Facebook and stuff

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Twiddling a bit with Facebook…

Ran into this link, which helped me to get the authentication from a WinForms-application working…

Tabified SharePoint

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

While looking up some stuff, I ran into this article. Something to try out someday soon, if you ask me.

Change of direction

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Well, it seems that, at least for now, my direction in IT will be changed… again…

At the end of this year, my contract at my current employer will expire and it will not be extended. At the moment, I’m very close to signing a contract with a different company, where I will be a system administrator once again, with a hint of SharePoint and network administration, at least for now.

Active Directory and MembershipProviders

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This link helped me some in handling password GPO-settings as well…

Might clarify some things from the previous post.

Active Directory and changing passwords through ASP.NET

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

When using an ASP.NET-application to change have a user change his/her password, Password Complexity can act up. Or better said… ASP.NET apparently doesn’t look at the settings set in Active Directory :-/

UpdatePanel-updates and losing focus

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’m currently fiddling around a bit with UpdatePanels (again), and noticed that focus is lost when the UpdatePanel is updated. Luckily, I found the following site that solved my problem. :)

SharePoint 2010, migrating from SharePoint 2007 and Language Packs

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

So… apparently SharePoint 2010 has a new ‘feature’… Instead of the English names in URLs, localized names are used.

For example, the default-page in 2007 for a Dutch-site has as URL: /Pages/default.aspx

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

While attempting to find a fix for the migration-thing, I ran into a problem while connecting to the SharePoint site.

First I got an IOFileNotFoundException, stating that the Web application was not found… So.. Visual Studio 2010 is set to x86 by default… and SharePoint 2010 is a x64-application. Got that one fixed thanks to this webpage.

RunWithElevatedPrivileges and security-validation errors

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been looking at some code that was written for us which works on one server, but fails on another.

Has to do with the page not running in the proper context at the time some actions are done.

LINQ is really REALLY nice :)

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Ran into a little problem having to do with setting some things on a SPGridView-column after databind.

Luckily I ran into this post, which helped me get a shorter version for the same purpose:

Weeknumbers and SQL Server

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I was investigating a problem today, where the first week of the year in The Netherlands was show by one of our applications as week 2.

Fortunately, I came across this link, which gave me a solution, and the knowledge that SQL Server 2008 has a native function for this.

SPGridView and Right-aligning Header-text

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

SPGridView is a really nice control. One of the problems I have encountered with it, is that when you set a column to show its header-text right-aligned, you can wait all you want, it will not happen.

Displaying Sharepoint Group-'description'

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’m working on a group-authorization webpart, where I need to display the description of the group. Unfortunately, the Desction-property of SPGroup does not contain what is shown in Sharepoint itself.

Adding 'formatted' fields to a SPGridView

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

While updating the WebPart of my main-project at work, I wanted to find a way to not use BoundField, but still be able to format how my data is displayed.

72

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I just came across a nice addition to my base web part:

if (Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContext.Current.FormContext.FormMode == SPControlMode.Display)
{
 // your code to support display mode
}
else // Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContext.Current.FormContext.FormMode = SPControlMode.Edit
{
 // your code to support edit mode
}

Since it isn’t mine, credits go to this post.

CheckBox-field sor selecting rows in SPGridView

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I also came across this nice article (which is also available here and here by another person) which shows how to add a checkbox to the rows in SPGridView for selecting individual rows.

LINQ/Lambda and SharePoint

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I just ran into a very nice article about using Lambda’s/LINQ on SharePoint objects. You can find it here.

Solution File and DataBase for SPGridView with working Filtering, Sorting, etc.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I finally managed to create a solution with all the bells whistling and sort… as far as I know.

The Visual Studio 2008 solution can de found here. The SQL database can be found here. Attach the database in SQL. If you find any problems or have any questions, please leave a comment or send me a mail.

Update...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Currently I’m trying to put together the VS2008 Solution containing the stuff I’ve written about the last few weeks. That is… I’m now installing SP2 on my Windows 2008 Virtual Machine, which seems to take forever. Hopefully I can continue work on the solution tomorrow.

Using Embedded resources in an ASPX-page/WebPart

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’m implementing UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress into my (Base)WebPart and since it is nice to have a ‘while processing’-image, I thought about embedding it as a resource.

This link helped me to accomplish this.

UpdatePanel-usage in SharePoint SP1+ WebParts

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah, I know… I promised to deliver some source-code…. Still working on the stuff, though

I’m trying to AJAX-ify the WebPart. Since Service Pack 1 both WSS3 and MOSS2007 have AJAX-support. So, I thought I would add an UpdatePanel-control to my WebPart and make things happen. However, there still needs to be some configuration done in the web.config. I ran into a very very helpful link here. Omit the lines with “AJAXControlKit”. These are not needed, and in fact generate errors. Unless you have the AJAX Control Kit installed… Which you do not need for UpdatePanel to work…

SPGridView and losing Filtering on Sorting

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, seems like I found out where things go wrong about losing filtering when sorting… I’ve disabled the ViewState for the SPGridView, because when a user refreshes his browser after working with things for a while and just returned from a detailsview of entered the detailsview from the gridview, the error “Failed to load ViewState” appears. This can be solved by disabling the viewstate for the gridview and/or detailsview (depending on what you want to prevent). So now I have to find a way to handle this nicely…

SPGridView, LinqDataSource and Filtering... and sorting

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, so I’ve hit one more snag… When a filter has been set, and a column is clicked to sort, the filter gets lost.

When an SPGridView sorts, it has an empty FilterFieldName. So, we have to see if we can store this somewhere.

Working Filtering on SPGridView and Child-properties

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Finally, I have my filtering working!! :D

Yesterday while I drove home (about an hours drive), I thought of a different approach to my problem; why not try to handle the stuff while applying the filter. Trick, at least for me, was to figure out how to do this.

Filtering in SPGridView with properties from the Child-table

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I can get the value from the child-record to show by using the selecting-event of the LinqDataSource and using, for example:

e.Result = var record from Parent
 select new {
 ParentID = record.ParentID,
 Name = Parent.Name,
 ChildProperty = Child.Property,
 ...
 }

Somehow, however, this screws up the filtering-part. Even when I disallow filtering on the columns from the child-record, the SPGridView only gives me “Loading…” in the WebPart for the filter. Reason for this seems to be that I had a “this.Page.Response.Write” in my page. Removing that fixed the initial problem of having no list to select the filter from.

SPGridView, Sorting, Filtering, Linq... WebParts.......

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I came across some very nice articles when browsing the internet for some information on how to enable filtering and sorting an an SPGridView with a LinqDataSource as datasource. The most usefull one I found is this one from Johan Leino.

Posts on Just Tinkering

Personal note - mental health - update

Consistently deploying Lambda functions and layers using Terraform

Personal note - mental health

Setting up AWS IoT Core using Terraform

Exporting an AMI to multiple formats

Creating an AMI with Image Builder

Dedicated game server and AWS Instance Scheduler

Automating patching with AWS Systems Manager

Lessons learned from migrating 42 servers to AWS

AWS Community Builder

How to enable and configure Security Hub for PCI DSS compliancy checks using Terraform

How to enable and configure Security Hub for PCI DSS compliancy checks using Terraform #

How to use Github OIDC and Terraform to assume roles in AWS using WebIdentity

VS Code and Javascript Debugging

Personal Note

Azure Expiring Passwords of Automation Accounts

Spectre/Meltdown Registry Keys

Synology Btrfs crash

Converting Wordpress-blog to Markdown

Exchange - Listing Calendar-delegates for mailboxes

Exchange - Listing mailboxes, mailbox-type and if the account is enabled

Changing the network profile in Windows

Rooting the Desire HD

MacBooks, BootCamp, Windows 7 and no optical drive...

Windows 7 and .NET FrameWork 1.1

Flashing Android

ThunderCloud?

Microsoft Cloudmail-server being blacklisted MY problem???

Facebook and stuff

Tabified SharePoint

Change of direction

Active Directory and MembershipProviders

Active Directory and changing passwords through ASP.NET

UpdatePanel-updates and losing focus

SharePoint 2010, migrating from SharePoint 2007 and Language Packs

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010

RunWithElevatedPrivileges and security-validation errors

LINQ is really REALLY nice :)

Weeknumbers and SQL Server

SPGridView and Right-aligning Header-text

Displaying Sharepoint Group-'description'

Adding 'formatted' fields to a SPGridView

72

CheckBox-field sor selecting rows in SPGridView

LINQ/Lambda and SharePoint

Solution File and DataBase for SPGridView with working Filtering, Sorting, etc.

Update...

Using Embedded resources in an ASPX-page/WebPart

UpdatePanel-usage in SharePoint SP1+ WebParts

SPGridView and losing Filtering on Sorting

SPGridView, LinqDataSource and Filtering... and sorting

Working Filtering on SPGridView and Child-properties

Filtering in SPGridView with properties from the Child-table

SPGridView, Sorting, Filtering, Linq... WebParts.......

How to enable and configure Security Hub for PCI DSS compliancy checks using Terraform
#